


all you left was time

by CallicoKitten



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post 3x14, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 06:02:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9587006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: He drags himself to Jim Gordon's house without really thinking about it, dripping wet and stinking and covered in blood. It's probably absurdly late but being shot in the gut and thrown in the harbour doesn't really do wonders for your time keeping aptitude.Jim's up anyways, dressed in an under-shirt and boxer shorts and holding a half-empty bottle of beer. "Gotham General's the other side of the city," he says, looking Oswald up and down but he moves aside to let Oswald in without being asked.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this has very probably been done but ah, well
> 
> title from paper ships by dead man's bones

He drags himself to Jim Gordon's house without really thinking about it, dripping wet and stinking and covered in blood. It's probably absurdly late but being shot in the gut and thrown in the harbour doesn't really do wonders for your time keeping aptitude.

Jim's up anyways, dressed in an under-shirt and boxer shorts and holding a half-empty bottle of beer. "Gotham General's the other side of the city," he says, looking Oswald up and down but he moves aside to let Oswald in without being asked.

Oswald makes it to the couch before collapsing and Jim makes a sound of annoyance as Oswald squelches down like he's worried Oswald will ruin the upholstery. Like all his furniture doesn't look like he found it in some back alley in the Narrows and dragged it in.

Oswald closes his eyes. His arms hurt from being clamped to his abdomen so hard and his head is swimming. He should be dead. Ed wants him dead.

He's probably only still alive so he can suffer more.

Jim has cross the room and is prising Oswald's hands off the bullet wounds. Oswald lets him, lets his arms drop to his sides with a huff of relief and Jim pokes and prods at the ragged, bloody hole. "Bullet still in there?" he asks.

Oswald opens his eyes, nods and Jim sighs, stands up and disappears out of Oswald's field of view. When he returns, he's holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a med-kit in the other. "We have to take it out. It'll get infected if we don't. You sure you don't want me to take you to the hospital?" he asks.

"I'm sure," Oswald says.

Jim nods and without warning, pours half the whiskey directly into Oswald's wound. The pain is blinding but all he can manage is a whimper.

"Damn," Jim says. "Thought you'd pass out." He kneels down and presses the half-empty bottle into Oswald's hands.

"This is really going to hurt," Jim warns and Oswald rolls his eyes because it's not like he _hasn't_ had bullets dug out of him by woefully under-qualified acquaintances before.

-

Oswald sleeps for what feels like days, wakes up to Jim standing over him looking mildly amused. He's holding a beer once again and at some point, he's pulled Oswald's shoes off and thrown a stinking, itchy blanket over him.

(At least it's not soft and clean like Ed's was. At least it doesn't remind him sharply of waking up in cotton pyjamas and Ed's gentle hands and - )

"Oh, good," Jim says, dryly. "I was beginning to worry I'd never get my couch back."

Oswald is too tired for this. Too bone-achingly tired. He sits up anyway, levels a glare at Jim and tries to think up something witty to say in response. He runs out of time though and Jim takes a long drag of his beer and says, "So, you gonna tell me what happened?"

"No," Oswald says, stroppily.

Jim raises his eyebrows; Oswald digs his finger tips into his aching forehead.

"The people are worried, you know," Jim says, conversationally. "Well, not _worried_ but intrigued, ever since your breakdown on public TV."

Oswald winces, "You saw that?"

Jim snorts. "No. Harvey gave me a blow by blow of it after; he was over the moon you'd messed up so publically."

"Oh, I _bet._ " Oswald has stories about Harvey Bullock that'd mean he'd never find employment again in Gotham. Maybe it's time to start telling them.

"One of your staffers is missing, you know," Jim goes on. "We're presuming he's dead but I'm guessing we won't turn up a body. What happened, Oswald? Pressure get to you?"

Oswald doesn't answer. Jim won't find the body though, not unless Ed wants him to. God, Ed had orchestrated his downfall so _perfectly._ So damn _perfectly._ And it fucking _hurts_ to think about.

Maybe he should have stayed dead this time.

"There's a warrant out for your arrest, you know," Jim says. "And since you came here I'm guessing you pissed off someone important."

 _The **only** one who's important, _Oswald thinks bitterly.

"So come on, Oswald. At least give me a name."

"Why?" Oswald bites out. "Going to defend my honour, Jim? Are you going march out there and throw whoever did this to me in Blackgate? Or maybe you'll give them a medal. This is what you wanted all along, isn't it? Me, alone and injured, my empire in _tatters._ "

"Well, I'm not going to pretend I don't like that you've been knocked down a peg or two," Jim says carefully. "But better the monster you know, right?"

"Oh, you know him," Oswald mutters. He doesn't mean to, not really, it just sort of slips out and just like that he's back at the docks, he's tied to a chair, he's tied to a car. _I loved her, Oswald,_ Ed says, snarls, sneers. _And you killed her._

Jim frowns, almost like he's genuinely concerned.

Oswald doesn't _like_ this Jim. He doesn't like this Jim who keeps giving him room to snipe and hasn't even threatened to haul him down to the GCPD yet if he doesn't play nice. Jim is supposed to give as good as he gets. He's supposed to be gruff and snarky and always a hair's breadth away from serious violence.

He must still be moping after Dr Thompkins. Or maybe he's getting soft in his old age. Maybe they both are.

"Don't pretend you _care_ , Jim," Oswald says, with as much venom as he can muster. "You don't."

That does the trick. The concern is carefully shuttered away and Jim sets his jaw. "True," he agrees. "But it's been a slow day. I'm bored."

"You can't watch tv like a regular person?"

"I could," Jim says pointedly. "But there's a former mayor occupying my couch right now, so."

 _Touche,_ Oswald thinks. He looks down at himself, the blanket pooling around his lap. He's still wearing his bloody suit, the shirt unbuttoned to reveal the swathes of bandages across his torso, stained a brownish-red. His jacket and shirt smell of the river, of fish and sewage and despair.

He thinks back to Jim Gordon marching him out onto the docks a hundred years ago.

"Ed did it," he says quietly.

"Ed," Jim repeats. "Edward Nygma? I thought you two were friends?" He says it almost gently, the same cadence his mother would use when Oswald was a boy and he'd come home beaten and bloody again. _But you are so popular,_ she would say as she pressed iodine to his wounds because she couldn't fathom of anyone not loving her little boy. _I thought you were friends with everyone, Oswald. Why would they do this to you, my darling? Why?_

Oswald glares. " _Yes,_ I don't know about you, Jim, but I _love_ taking my friends out to the docks and shooting them."

Jim winces but he recovers quickly. " _You_ probably do, Oswald."

Oswald sets his jaw.

"So, what did you do to him?" Jim asks. "Screw him over?"

 _I did **nothing,**_ Oswald wants to snap but he doesn't. He doesn't want Jim Gordon looking at him like that anymore. He doesn't want to think about Ed, doesn't want to talk about him, doesn't want to say _I was **helping** him, it's not **my** fault he couldn't see that, _doesn't want to say _I loved him, that's all. That's all I did._

"It doesn't matter," Oswald settles for. "Are you going to turn me in?"

"Haven't decided yet."

"Do you want me to leave?"

Jim sighs, "No, Oswald, you don't have to leave. I mean, you do eventually but just - take a shower, would you? You're stinking up the place; I don't want the neighbours to complain. And eat something. I _really_ don't want to have to explain to anyone that I let the former mayor starve himself to death on my couch."

Oswald scowls.

-

Oswald dreams a lot from Jim Gordon's couch.

He dreams about Arkham, he dreams about his mother, he dreams about his father and his step-siblings and his wretched step-mother and Fish Moony clicking her fingers at him like he's a dog.

Mostly though, he dreams of Ed.

He dreams of the river, of Ed dragging him down at the ankles as he tries to swim up towards the surface. _But I love you,_ he thinks, stupidly, desperately. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

Ed only laughs.

 Jim wakes him up when he gets too loud, kicks the couch or yanks the pillow out from under his head so it thunks down onto the arm of the couch. He doesn't ask anymore and Oswald's grateful, even if Jim's probably stopped asking because Barbara's paid him a visit and told him the whole juicy story.

He's hardly home these days anyway but he leaves Oswald food and changes his bandages with varying regularity. It's awkward for both of them, this forced _domesticity_. Jim bent over him while Oswald looks away, cheeks colouring, Jim's movements hurried but precise, his fingers rough against Oswald's skin.

(Before this Jim only touched him when they fucked, one hand at Oswald's throat, the other at his hips, both of them pretending they were with anyone but each other.)

"'M not much of a nursemaid," he mumbles often, trying to lighten the mood.

And Oswald thinks, _no, no you aren't._ Ed was better. Gentle, attentive.

Ed did this to him.

(But Jim is gentle when Oswald's wound gets infected anyway and Oswald is out of his mind with pain and fever, writhing and mumbling on the couch, whimpering for his mother, for Ed, for someone to make this all stop. Jim presses cooling cloths to his forehead - well, he puts them there and leaves them, comes back to change them often - daubs antiseptic on the wound, holds Oswald still as it burns and stings, makes sure Oswald takes medicine  and eats.

"Don't you have a job to do," Oswald accuses in a lucid moment.

"I took the day off," Jim says, stirring a crushed antibiotic into a bowl of thin broth.

"You don't take time off."

Jim smiles faintly, briefly. "Harvey very strongly recommended I take a personal day."

"Why? Did you shoot another unarmed man, Jim? Another one of Dr Thompkin's boyfriends?"

"Something like that," Jim says. He leans forward, presses his dry palm against Oswald's burning forehead.)

-

Jim brings Harvey home often, Oswald learns. For a few celebratory drinks or to work late on a case but mostly, Harvey turns up unannounced and lets himself in. The first time he does this, Jim's in the shower and Oswald's left to fend for himself while Harvey looks far less surprised than he probably should.

"You really do have a thing for the crazy ones," he says to Jim when he emerges.

Jim doesn't bother to correct him.

Oswald's still too far gone to do more than glare.

It's a week or so later, when Oswald's feeling a little less like something that got shot in the gut and had to crawl out of a river of sewage and more like himself again that Harvey looks up from the file that he and Jim are pouring over and says, "You know, your boyfriend is really becoming a pain in the ass."

Oswald seethes. Ed's causing chaos all over the city. He's seen it on the news.

"He is _not_ my boyfriend," he spits and Harvey looks slightly taken aback by his venom.

"Oswald's a little touchy about that right now, Harv," Jim says quickly. Harvey looks at him and the two have some sort of non-verbal conversation before Harvey drops it.

Later, when Jim's stepped out on a food run, Harvey looks back to where Oswald's glaring at him from the couch and says, "You know, Oswald, we could do with some help catching Nygma, he's a slippery bastard, after all so any intel you have would go a long way to convincing me not to throw you in a cell when you look less like you're about to keel over. I could even be persuaded to let you have an hour or two alone with him before we send him to Arkham, how 'bout it?"

Oswald wants to say _yes._

After his mother's death, he spent hours and hours fantasising about the many things he'd do to Tabitha when he caught her, when Barbara had looked away or the uneasy truce they'd signed between them had crumbled or was no longer necessary, all the ways he'd make her scream. When he worked for Fish, he used to dream about that for her. The woman who saw him as a commodity until she stopped and started seeing him as a son, as a project, as something to be _proud_ of.

She hadn't killed him then, or before, or since. She hadn't wanted to.

He reaches for some anger towards Ed but doesn't find any. There's only this festering absence in his gut, this moroseness that's wormed it's way into his bones. "I don't know anything, detective," he says and Harvey huffs.

" _Fine._ And it's Chief now, by the way. You know, Oswald, sometimes I really wish Jim had just shot you way back when."

"I thought it was _Acting_ Chief," Oswald says.

Harvey glowers.

-

They fuck the night before Oswald leaves.

Ed's still running rings around the GCPD (and Oswald thinks, _of course he is._ Ed's a genius, cleverer than anyone Oswald's ever met and there's a pang of pride that makes him want to crawl back into the river and never come out again.) Jim's angry and frustrated and slightly drunk and he says, "Come on, Oswald, you must know _something._ Barbara said you fell out over a woman. That it? That have anything to do with this?"

And Oswald kisses him to shut him up because he doesn't want to think anymore.

Jim tries to fight it before he gives in, pulls Oswald onto his lap.

(He's gentler than usual, holds Oswald carefully, like he might break, like he might shatter. Like he needs holding together and Oswald has never hated Jim Gordon more than he has in that moment.)

He's gone the next morning and Oswald's grateful as he packs. He had been intending to leave without a word but of course, Jim Gordon doesn't give him the chance. He turns up, gets home early and watches with his arms crossed as Oswald piles bandages and antiseptics into a duffel bag he found in the bottom of Jim's closet.

"You going to pay me back?" Jim asks.

Oswald ignores him. When he's done he straightens up, winces a little as the stitches in his gut tug and Jim makes a face but he bites back any concerns he has. Instead he asks, "Where are you gonna go, Oswald?"

Oswald doesn't really know. There's nowhere for him here, at any rate. Maybe he'll leave Gotham for while.

"Don't worry," Oswald says. "I'll stay out your way."

Jim nods thoughtfully.

Oswald hovers a moment. He should probably say thank you, or something but if he does Jim will look at him like _that_ and - Oswald knows this thing he has with Jim Gordon has never been about anything more than garnering favours but sometimes it feels like it's straying away from that, like it's veering dangerously close to something else.

So he's about to leave when Jim says, "Look, Oswald, I don't know what happened between you and Nygma but I get the feeling that it was something more than your usual spats with villains."

"Yes, you _don't_ know," Oswald says hotly. "So would you kindly refrain from - "

Jim holds up his hands, "I'm not trying to involve myself," he interrupts. "I'm just saying, I wouldn't have voted for you, alright? But you weren't half bad as a mayor, so maybe don't throw all that away over trying to get revenge, okay? Especially if he means a lot to you." He breaks off to rub the back of his neck, "I've seen people go down that path and trust me, it's not pretty."

For a moment, Oswald thinks he's talking about Barbara. Barbara who was so pathetically in love with Jim she tore herself to pieces over it but Barbara came through that and rebuilt herself better, stronger, far more dangerous than anyone would have presumed. Jim's talking about himself, Oswald realises.

"I'll bare that in mind," he says, quietly and Jim nods, avoiding Oswald's gaze.

"Good. And just so we're clear, the next time I see you, I'll be taking you directly to Blackgate," Jim says.

Oswald nods. "Well," he says, after a beat. "I suppose I'll see you around, old friend."

Jim laughs. "I hope not, Oswald. I really hope not."


End file.
